Our club has one in a roll-off rooof observatory, with the CGE Pro on a permanent pier. It is a fine scope, but it really cries out for permanent mounting. Transport and setup would be a pretty significant undertaking for one person. Visually is is top of the line.

I'm in the design phase for a roll-off roof observatory to be located near Pikes Peak. I would like to permanently mount this scope/mount combo as the main instrument.

I'd be interested in any advice on designing the pier based on your club's experience. I looked through the Celestron site for documentation that would allow me to design the pier prior to obtaining the scope, but did not see enough to go on. For example, the height of the pier so the roof clears the parked scope is important as is the mount to pier details.

I'm in the design phase for a roll-off roof observatory to be located near Pikes Peak. I would like to permanently mount this scope/mount combo as the main instrument.

I'd be interested in any advice on designing the pier based on your club's experience. I looked through the Celestron site for documentation that would allow me to design the pier prior to obtaining the scope, but did not see enough to go on. For example, the height of the pier so the roof clears the parked scope is important as is the mount to pier details.

Any information would be much appreciate.

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I'm in a similar situation. I've been planning a roll off roof observatory and it's difficult to find information about the height of the scope from Celestron's website. It makes it tough to fabricate a pier in advance of purchasing the scope. From what I've been able to deduce, if you have the scope sitting on its tripod at the lowest setting (38"), then the mounting bracket for the optical tube is about 55" high. The remainder of the height will depend upon the size of the optical tube attached. I've calculated that if the pier is 38" high, even with a 14" scope you should still have a few inches to clear a 6ft high roll off observatory roof. Any additional thoughts would be appreciated.

I have a CGE Pro with an Edge 14 HD and an 80 mm APO mounted on a concrete pier in a roll-off roof observatory. The concrete pier is 14" diameter and protrudes 30" from the floor. The floor is suspended so that it does not touch the pier. The pier is anchored to a block of concrete 8" underground weighing 5000#. It is literally rock steady; it was all poured on the same day and is one huge heavy monolith. The mount mates to the pier with a home-made plate utilizing 2 1" thick pieces of plywood which join the j-bolts from the pier to the base of the mount. The scope stands about 7' tall, but I park it on its side, so the height of the roof is not an issue.

However, I don't recommend this method. Better to use a concrete platform anchored to the ground with a steel pier bolted to it and a Dan's plate to join the mount to the pier. My set-up is literally too permanent. It would be very difficult to either raise or lower the pier height, and using a dob is out of the question -- there is no room in the observatory with this beast in place. Think about your current as well as future needs when you design the observatory. If I were to do it again, I would not use a concrete pier but would use the platform approach instead. Lou